


NEO

by RiaHawk



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Geno Run, Implied Character Death, Spoilers, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-30
Updated: 2016-06-06
Packaged: 2018-07-11 03:26:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7026628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RiaHawk/pseuds/RiaHawk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As the human is cutting their way through the Underground, Alphys is doing all she can to evacuate the monsters to safety before any more lives are lost, without total success, though Mettaton is helping her the only way he can.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Death By Glamour

Alphys stared up at the screen. She'd been monitoring the human ever since she'd been alerted to their presence, and what she'd seen had horrified her. It had happened before, that a human would fall into the Underground and attack any monster that crossed their path, but this was different. This wasn't simply retaliating against being attacked, or even attacking anything that got in their way.

The human was _hunting_ them.

She'd known the human was dangerous even before they'd shown up on her camera feeds; a ghost who liked to hang out in the Ruins of Home had become frightened by their behavior even there, and had, for whatever reason, shown up at Alphys's lab to hide. 

It had only gotten worse from there.

A lot of people had already died, though some had made it through from Snowdin and Waterfall as word passed. But not enough. 

Undyne had left Alphys in charge of evacuation efforts, and gone to confront the human and put an end to the madness. And Alphys had really believed that Undyne would save the day.

Until now.

Even on the cameras, she could tell that the hit Undyne had just taken was a fatal one. The armored warrior was already starting to turn to dust.

"No...." Alphys said, her voice little more than a whisper. She closed her eyes, allowing herself this one tiny moment of grief. Then she snapped them back open, and found her cellphone, dialing rapidly. "Start evacuating Hotland, the resort, and the Core. Everyone you can. I'm d-deactivating all the puzzles. Get everyone to my lab at the entrance to W-Waterfall." The royal guard on the other end started to say something, and she cut him off. "No. There's no t-time. Just d-do it."

Mettaton winced at the lack of stutter. Alphys stuttered because she was always anxious, and while he would love to see her get over her anxiety, that wasn't what this was. She was so focused on the emergency at hand that she didn't have time to be anxious. Granted, in a situation like this, they needed someone with a cool head directing things. But he knew Alphys, and he knew that tone. She was in total crisis mode right now, but as soon as she didn't have to focus on keeping everyone else alive, she was going to come completely apart. And he wasn't sure he'd be able to put her back together this time.

But right now, when she was firmly in crisis management mode, there was little good to be done by bringing it up. So instead, he just asked "THE LAB? WHY HERE?"

Alphys was already working, her claws flying over the keyboard. "It's the only secure place. If I evacuate them through New Home, there's nowhere to go once they reach the barrier. But if I can get all of the evacuees into the facility downstairs, I can seal it off. The human won't be able to get in."

That startled the robot. Alphys didn't even let _him_ into the facility downstairs, and he knew most of her secrets already. "ARE YOU SURE?"

"There's no other place," she said mechanically. "The human would find any other safe zone. My sins aren't what's important right now. If I can get everyone down there and seal it off, there's enough oxygen, water, and food to last quite some time."

Mettaton didn't know how to respond to that, and instead looked at the video screen. "ALPHYS! LOOK! UNDYNE..." The captain of the guard had apparently got a second wind, and was still pressing the attack... somehow.

Alphys did look, and her eyes dialated in a way that Mettaton didn't entirely like. "....She's forced herself to recoalesce through sheer Determination..."

"THAT'S FANTASTIC! SHE'S-"

"Running on borrowed time," Alphys said, returning to her keyboard. "Determination is fatal to monsters even in small doses. We don't generally produce it naturally, and its raw form is caustic. Under normal circumstances, it causes monster bodies to break down. I imagine the process will be vastly accelerated due to the stresses of combat. She won't be able to hold it together long."

Oh, it was a _terrible_ sign that she'd gone scientifically precise when discussing the love of her life and said love's tenuous existance. But right now, the Underground needed a mostly-functioning Alphys if any of them were going to survive. Which meant that her emotional shutdown was a necessary evil.

It was just going to be very ugly later.

"...This isn't good," Alphys said, checking her cameras. "Unless Undyne can kill the human right now, the evacuees are going to reach the lab at about the same time the human does. I can put up a force field between the elevators and the entrance to Waterfall, but if the human decides to wait around..." She frowned, then called the Royal Guards again. "This is Alphys. Wait at the L1 elevator until I give you the word. If the human makes it past Undyne, I'm going to have to route them into the back way through Hotland." She hung up before questions could be asked. "If I unlock the back door, they should keep going the long way around. Even with all the puzzles deactivated, it'll take them some time to get all the way through. The only problem is, I have to give them a reason to keep going and not poke around the lab."

Mettaton looked at the video feeds, then at the back door thoughtfully. Undyne was putting up a hell of a fight, but the odds did not look good. "HOW MUCH TIME DO YOU NEED TO GET EVERYONE IN?"

She looked up at him, startled. "You're not thinking of-"

"ALPHYS. DARLING," he said gently. "HOW MUCH TIME DO YOU NEED?"

"Ten minutes. I could do better with twenty. But do you know how dangerous-"

"YOU KNOW HOW MUCH I LOVE BEING THE CENTER OF ATTENTION, DARLING. AND ANYWAY, WHAT CAN THEY DO TO ME?"

"You're not as vulnerable as the rest of us to physical attack, but that doesn't make you invulnerable."

He shrugged. "I'LL MANAGE. I JUST HAVE TO GET THE HUMAN'S ATTENTION LONG ENOUGH THAT THEY GO THE LONG WAY."

Alphys hesitated, then nodded. "All right. I'll wait in the elevator out of sight until they've gone through. Don't engage them. I'm serious, Mettaton."

"I'M JUST GOING TO GET THEM TO CHASE ME, THAT'S ALL, DARLING."

It was clear Alphys didn't like the idea, but it was the only plan they had. They had to get the human to pass through the lab quickly.

Alphys's calculations proved to be correct. They watched in silence as Undyne finally fell, and the human continued on straight towards Hotland. Mettaton had to shoo Alphys into the elevator, and she sealed the door just as the front door to the lab slid open.

The human was smaller than Mettaton had expected. Naturally, he'd seen them on the video cameras, but somehow, the physical reality was smaller. It was astonishing that something so small could hold so much wickedness. And Alphys had been right, they were inclined to poke around.

They stopped when they saw Mettaton in the corridor. "OH. THERE YOU ARE. YOU UGLY LITTLE CREATURE. YOU'VE MADE QUITE A NAME FOR YOURSELF." He mockingly clapped his hands. "SUCH INFAMY. I'M IMPRESSED." It really was a good thing that he was such a brilliant actor. This required a delicate touch; he had to be just obnoxious enough for the human to chase him, but not so much that they didn't simply launch themselves at him right now. A thought occurred to him. "OH, YES. IF YOU'RE LOOKING FOR ALPHYS, SHE'S NOT HERE. WHILE YOU WERE BUSY DOING YOUR, AHEM, THING, SHE WAS RUNNING AROUND EVACUATING PEOPLE TO SAFETY." Technically true. "NOW THEY'RE IN A PLACE WHERE YOU'LL NEVER GET THEM." Or at least they would be. "DECIDING NOT TO FIGHT YOU. MY, SHE REALLY IS THE ONLY SMART ONE, ISN'T SHE?" He hoped she could hear him through the elevator door. His voice did naturally carry, after all, and it was probably something she could stand to hear.

But naturally, if she was the only smart one for not confronting the human, what did that make him? The human took a step towards him. "OH? HOW SASSY." The human's expression proved hard to read, but it wasn't hard to guess their intent. "YOU'RE JUST ITCHING TO GET YOUR HANDS ON ME, AREN'T YOU?" He might not be smart, but he wasn't an idiot. "WELL, T-O-O B-A-D! THIS WORLD NEEDS STARS MORE THAN IT NEEDS CORPSES!" He gave the human a cheeky wave. "TOODLES!" Then he bolted for the back door.

And a few moments later, he heard the human follow him, and the back door's mechanical whirr as it closed behind them. He texted Alphys as he moved. Brilliant idea, to have an inbuilt function for that... He let her know that the human had passed through the lab, and she could proceed with the evacuation. 

Now he just had to figure out what to do with the human.


	2. The Power of NEO

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Take a bow, drop the curtain, and... scene.

The evacuation had largely gone as planned. Oh, there were a few monsters who wouldn't leave; Muffet had refused to budge from her lair when Mettaton passed through it. She'd asked how the human felt about spiders, and Mettaton had told her that they hated spiders... since they seemed to hate everything that was alive. She said she'd do something about it. And had very deliberately ignored him when he tried to point out that if the human could get past Undyne, not many other monsters stood a chance.

Well, that was her choice. And she had managed to slow them down.

The human was still trailing him, of course. Alphys was keeping tabs on the human's progress through her video feeds, and relaying the information to him. He was staying a good distance ahead of them because he wasn't stupid; a murderous human was not his ideal audience. 

Hotland had been evacuated, and Alphys had just notified him that the Resort and the Core were almost empty. Which was good, because he had just reached the Resort himself, and the human wouldn't be too far behind.

The idea was that they'd route the human through the most direct path through the Core to  
New Home and Asgore's throne room. Alphys had said that if the King used the human souls he had in storage, he could easily defeat the human...

It wasn't optimal, but what about this situation was?

But there was a hitch. It had occurred to Mettaton shortly after he'd reached the Core.

He contacted Alphys. "HOW IS THE EVACUATION GOING?"

"We've got everyone now... I just got word that Bratty and Catty are out and they were the last two, except for the cashier at the burger place, he won't budge."

"I'M SURE HE'LL BE FINE. QUESTION, DARLING. ARE THE LAST UPGRADES WE TRIED STILL INSTALLED?"

There was the faint hum of silence on the line. "Th-the Neo set?" He could hear the confusion in her voice. "Th-they are, but we never finished them, neither of us liked it..." Then, to his dismay, she realized what he was planning. "No! Don't you dare! The w-weapons aren't functional, and the armor was n-never even installed!"

"THAT DREADFUL LITTLE CREATURE LIKES MEDDLING WITH THINGS. WE'RE IN THE LAST PLACE WE SHOULD LET THEM MEDDLE WITH THINGS, DARLING. WHAT WILL HAPPEN IF THEY GO TO PUSHING BUTTONS IN THE CORE?"

She didn't answer, but she knew it as well as he did: nothing good.

"ANYWAY, THE BATTERY FOR THE NEO FORM WAS A BIT UNSTABLE, WASN'T IT? IT SHOULDN'T TAKE MUCH TO MAKE IT GO CRITICAL. I JUST NEED TO DISTRACT THEM A MINUTE OR TWO TO OVERLOAD IT, AND I CAN PROBABLY TAKE THEM OUT BEFORE THEY EVEN MAKE IT TO ASGORE."

"B-but you-"

"I'LL BE FINE, DARLING. I'M A GHOST, REMEMBER~? I'LL JUST LET GO. SHAME TO RUIN ALL YOUR HARD WORK, BUT-"

"Mettaton, it doesn't work that way! Y-you k-know it d-doesn't work that w-way! You're f-fully c-corporeal, you c-can b-be-"

He'd hoped she wouldn't remember that, but there was no helping it. "ALPHYS. I KNOW WHAT I'M DOING. I CAN'T LET THE HUMAN HANG AROUND IN THE CORE. THERE ARE TOO MANY THINGS THEY COULD BREAK, AND YOU'LL NEED THE POWER TO KEEP EVERYONE ELSE SAFE. IF I CAN DISTRACT THE HUMAN LONG ENOUGH TO DETONATE THE BATTERY PACK, THE EXPLOSION WILL KILL THEM."

"B-but why y-you?!" she demanded. "I alr-ready l-lost Und-dyne, I c-can't l-lose you t-too!"

"BECAUSE I'M THE ONE WHO'S _HERE_ , DARLING. AND BECAUSE THE UNDERGROUND _NEEDS_ A BRILLIANT SCIENTIST MORE THAN IT NEEDS STARS. YOU'RE THE ONE WHO'LL SAVE THEM ALL, DARLING. YOU CAN DO IT. ALL I CAN DO IS BUY YOU THE TIME YOU NEED."

Silence. 

It really wasn't fair to her, but there was no other way. Mettaton was vain, and shallow, and selfish... but he could see clearly what had to be done. And anyway, the human would be here any minute. The elevators had already been disabled behind them; he was out of options and he suspected Alphys knew that as well as he did. 

It was nerve-wracking, waiting in the dark for the genocidal human, but he'd made his peace with it. It was going to be the hell of a farewell performance, he could promise that much. However, as he heard the human's approaching footsteps, he contacted Alphys one last time.

"ALPHYS? DO ME A FAVOR?"

"W-what? I c-can s-send someone t-to-"

"NO. JUST...." He paused, for the first time in his life reaching for words.

"PROMISE ME YOU'LL LOOK AFTER BLOOKY FOR ME, ALL RIGHT?"


End file.
